The Jewels of Tessa Kent (31 page)

“Hey,” said a quiet voice behind her.

Maggie almost fell off the fence in surprise, prevented by a pair of muscular arms grasped around her waist.

“Don’t say anything, it’s me, Barney,” he whispered urgently in her ear, and lifted her easily off the fence so that she stood directly in front of him.

“What are you doing here! You’re not supposed to get out of school till next week. What’s going on? Why are you whispering?”

“I’ve been expelled.”

“Shit! Why?”

“Pot party, I made the buy and they caught me on the way to my room where the other guys were waiting.”

“Oh, Barney, you asshole! You
moron
, you’ve fucked up your life. Jesus! What happened to the others?”

“They said they didn’t know what I was up to, a surprise to them.”

“Nice guys.”

“Why should they risk admitting anything when they didn’t have any weed on them? I’d have done the same. So I’m out, one year short of graduating.”

“How’d you get here?”

“On my bike. I have a secondhand Harley I fixed up so it’s better than new, kept it in a garage in town. Bikes are my thing, my real thing, I’m so good with bikes you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Wow,
Easy Rider
all over again,” she drawled.

“You got it, I’m reinventing the genre,” he grinned. “Somebody’s got to.”

“And what are Ma and Pa Webster going to say?”

“That’s the part where it could get nasty. Let’s go in the tack room and figure out a lie.”

“Barney, you’re delusional. The school’ll notify them. You’d have it easier escaping from Alcatraz.”

“I’ve already escaped from Alcatraz, I took off as soon as I was kicked out, didn’t pack, just got my bike and headed home.”

“Alcatraz? I thought you liked school.”

“Nope, not really. I’m academically deeply lacking, but mechanically brilliant. I tried to be a real preppy but my heart wasn’t in it. I made a lot of friends, but they’re busy planning to turn into their fathers, and that isn’t for me. I want to work with my hands, run a bike shop—it’s my dream—only problem is I don’t dare tell my folks, they’ll never allow it. A blue-collar son! They’ll make me get a college degree from any tenth-rate place that would have me, even if they have to bribe one.”

He opened the door to the tack room, turned on the light, and closed it behind them.

“Whew! Safe at last. I figured I might find you still trying to learn how to stay on a horse, so I came down here first, left my bike behind the barn.”

“I can damn well stay on any horse in the Essex Hunt.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They faced off opposite each other, unable to stop smiling in sheer joy at the sight of each other. She’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life, Maggie thought. Time seemed to stretch and sway, as subtle as a spider web, time all but stopped while they searched each other’s faces, suddenly speechless. Barney had shot up, he was well over six feet tall. His streaky blond hair, tangled by his long ride, flopped over his forehead; his face was tanned; his pleasant, lively boy’s face had turned into that of an almost-man, strong but still changing into what it would eventually become. His impudent grin and his freckles were the only fleeting reminder of the boy she’d known since she was five.

“Bet you can’t,” he said. “Bet I still have to save your ass.”

“What’ll you bet?” Maggie challenged him.

“A kiss.”

“What kind of bet is that? If I can’t ride I kiss you, if
I can ride you kiss me? Heads you win, tails I lose? No thanks.”

“Okay, no bet. I believe you. Do you know what a sexy, lovely girl you’ve turned into?”

“Of course.”

“Well I didn’t.” He put his hands on either side of her face and bent down and kissed her full on the lips, a long, lusty, sweet, sweaty kiss that detonated like a depth bomb in her belly. Her eyes opened wide in astonishment as she kissed him back wholeheartedly, voraciously. The tack room whirled around her; bridles and saddles, hunt caps, rows of polished boots, dozens of photos of horses—everything blurred and she staggered with dizziness. Only Barney’s arms kept her upright.

“You liked that,” he said, stunned by her response.

“I did. I’d like more. Over here, on the sofa.”

“Maggie, we’re not related or anything, are we?”

“Not even kissing cousins. We’re just old friends.”

“Oh, God,” he groaned, “you’re so gorgeous, so grown-up, where have I been?”

“Too busy to notice me.”

“I must have been fucking stupid.”

“You are. Shut up.” She reached up for him with her open, impetuous, curious, innocent lips, groaning with hungry haste and need, adoring the touch of his searching tongue. She quivered with delight as he explored her mouth, lacing her fingers in his hair to bring him closer, kissing him all over his face, smelling his unfamiliar, delicious, rough skin. She rapidly pushed and pulled him around so that she could kiss his neck and his ears and his forehead, returning always to his open mouth and his hot, eager, shamelessly seeking tongue. Oh, Barney was a man, a man and a stranger and she had never known, never understood. She loved him, Maggie thought dimly, loved him as she would love a man.

“I’ve got to feel your breasts,” he muttered into her lips. Maggie instantly ripped the buttons of her blouse
open and exposed her breasts to his hands and his mouth, catching her breath in bliss as she felt his touch, so warm, so firm, so focused, so utterly different from when she played with them herself that a new world opened up to her. She lay under him, pushing upward, as he greedily sucked her nipples and madly rubbed her mound, under her jeans, with a penis that felt like a club. In a minute they both came, fully dressed, Maggie gasping, Barney with a muffled scream.

Too shaken to say anything, too surprised to move, they lay one on top of the other, holding each other tightly. After a minute Maggie, crushed, eased herself out from under Barney’s body and lay next to him, hugging him close. He was limp from the unexpected power of his orgasm, she was weak with a pleasure greater than she’d ever known.

“And we didn’t even
do
anything,” Barney finally said in wonder.

“We didn’t?”

“Not really.”

“I never have,” she admitted. “Have you?”

“Yeah, not much though. You’re so … A fast.”

“Is that good?”

“Damn right. Oh, Maggie, I’ve got to do it again.”

“I do too.”

“Touch me this time, touch me, please, I’ve always loved you, Maggie.”

“I know.”

“Can you take off your jeans? I want to touch you too.”

“Okay, but that’s all, just touching.”

“I promise.”

In seconds both of them were naked, kissing and nipping at each other, looking at all their secret places, exploring each other’s bodies almost roughly, trying to hold back from the only thing they really wanted, until, as mad with curiosity as with need, they both had to give in and explore each other frantically between their legs, fingers wet and ruthless. Soon, much too soon,
they were both racked by profound, piercing, slowly widening and exploding orgasms that neither of them would forget for the rest of their lives.

Maggie returned to her room by a back staircase while Barney settled down to sleep in the tack room. She’d managed to make herself look almost normal in case she met anyone on the way, but no one saw her as she shakily made her way home and closed her door behind her. She sniffed herself. She’d never smelled the aftermath of sex on herself before, but she knew instantly that the first thing to do was to take a shower. The pungent odor was all over her, on her hands, on her jeans, even her hair reeked wonderfully of Barney and his sticky juices. If there hadn’t been the chance of someone knocking at the door to find out why she wasn’t at dinner, she would have liked to have wallowed in the marvelous smells of the two of them as long as possible, but she had no choice.

After her shower Maggie put on clean pajamas and got into bed so that she could say to a curious maid that she didn’t feel well enough to eat. She turned off her lights, lay back on her pillow, and finally let herself think about what had just happened to her.

Barney, Barney, was all she could think at first, still dazzled by a trembling buzz that made her nerves zing with shudders from head to toe when she thought about the look of his cock, the unexpectedly smooth skin of his cock rising from the silky nest of his blond pubic hair, the blue veins on his cock, the thickness of his cock, the way it became, literally, the center of the universe as it grew imperious, demanding, irresistible. He had a power she’d never known existed. If he had asked her, she might not have been able to stop him from putting his cock in her. She longed for it so intensely right now that she was forced to give herself to another orgasm, before she was calm enough to think about anything else.

Barney was seventeen and a half years old, Maggie
told herself when she had regained her breath and found herself finally able to consider the situation calmly. A man-boy, half-grown, who had the terrifying power to make her do crazy things because of that thick cock that dangled so heavily between his legs when he stood up to put on his jeans.

No
. The word came from within her, a warning, a summons, an enjoinment from deep within her spirit. If she met him again in the tack room there was no possibility of not giving in to him. By tomorrow he would have managed to jaunt out on his bike and buy condoms, she was certain of it, and somehow he’d talk her into thinking that was safe enough, because she wanted him so much.
No!

She was scared witless, Maggie realized with the utmost seriousness, by the thought of how helpless she would become if she lay in his arms again, kissed him, smelled him. She’d never be able to stop with just grinding and petting and the kind of touching they’d done tonight. Barney, darling, beautiful Barney, no! She knew ten times more about sex now than she had a few hours ago, she knew that his stiff cock—that cock she’d always want—was quite enough to make her take leave of her senses.
And she wasn’t going to do it
.

She must not. She dared not. There were too many reasons against it, she told herself sternly. They could not allow themselves to venture any deeper into a sexual obsession with each other. As little as Maggie knew, she realized enough to sense that they were on the very verge of obsession.

They were not kissing cousins, not related by a drop of blood, this almost-grown-up Barney was as fascinating as if he were a stranger and she could too easily imagine the insane risks they’d be willing to take, if they ever really started. They’d do anything to be together and one of those times they’d be discovered and utterly disgraced. By Madison and Tyler.
No, never!

She was on her way to college, he’d been thrown out of prep school and didn’t want to go back. She was on
her way to many years of adventure, he had no ambitions beyond his dream of a bike shop, Maggie told herself, forcing herself to be coldly realistic. Both of them had their lives ahead of them but they didn’t want the same things. Sex wouldn’t be enough, their still-childish love wouldn’t be enough. The real world would crush them. They were simply too young. Kids, both of them.

What had happened to all her sense of adventure and her eagerness to get out and stir the world up around her? she asked herself. The answer came clearly. Nothing had happened. She still intended to have it all. Barney’s appearance here tonight had changed nothing fundamental. The timing was all wrong. She couldn’t change her own dreams for Barney, sweet, loving, heavenly, glorious Barney, even if she would never forget him. It was over. It had to be over. There was no choice. Never again.

It was, Maggie thought as the tears streamed down her cheeks, her first one-night stand.

The next day, at lunch, Maggie found herself alone at the table.

“Where are my aunt and uncle?” she asked Elizabeth as soon as she could find her alone.

“They left to fly up to Barney’s school, that’s what I heard them say at breakfast. There’s some sort of big trouble, but I don’t know what it is.”

“You haven’t seen … anyone else around?”

“You know more about it than I do, I’ll bet.”

“What makes you say that?” Maggie asked innocently.

“Because I found Barney hanging around here when I came downstairs this morning and I had to give him half the food in the kitchen before he’d go away.”

“Barney? What’s he doing here?”

“That’s what I thought you’d know.”

“I haven’t got a clue.”

Maggie wandered down to the stables, dawdling
along the path. Barney couldn’t be in the barn or the tack room or the stable hands would have seen him.

“Jesus, I thought you’d never show up,” he said, stepping out from behind a grove of trees. “Come here, come here darling Maggie, I’ve been up all night thinking about you.”

“No, Barney,” she said, standing in the middle of the path. “It was the most wonderful, exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. It was bliss, Barney, but I can’t, not again, I can’t even kiss you.”

The amazing hurt on his face went through her heart, but she faced him firmly.

“Nothing will ever work out for us, and I love you too much to dare to love you more.”

“That’s crap! Pure crap!”

“Maybe, to you, but not to me.”

“Come here and explain what you mean.”

“No. I’m going back to the house. I just came to tell you. And there’s something else. I know that they’ve gone to make a fuss and get Andover to take you back, and maybe they’ll manage it, but I think you should do what you’re good at, what you want to do. Go to New York and work with bikes, and get what you really want. Make your own life, don’t let them force you into anything. You’re different from them.”

“You came down here to give me career advice?” he asked incredulously.

“Yep, I did. Do you need any money?”

“Christ!”

“Well, do you?”

“No, I have enough.”

“Will you let me know where you are in New York?”

“Will you come to visit me?”

“I don’t know, maybe someday, but first I have to go to college, Barney, I have to grow up and so do you.”